Research Evaluation of the City of Columbus' Response to the 2020
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Research Evaluation of the City of Columbus’ Response to the 2020 Summer Protests Trevor L. Brown, Ph.D. Carter M. Stewart, J.D. John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Table of Contents 1 Overview 5 Executive Summary of Findings and Recommendations 11 Context: Systemic Racism, Policing and Protests 17 Columbus Context and Timeline of Key Events 25 Chapter 1: Citizen-Police Relations and the Protests; Community Member Trauma 32 Chapter 2: City and Columbus Division of Police Leadership and Incident Command 41 Chapter 3: Policy and Training 52 Chapter 4: Officer Wellness and Morale 57 Chapter 5: Mutual Aid 61 Chapter 6: Transparency, Accountability, Public Communication, and Social Media 67 Conclusion 69 Works Cited 80 Appendix A: Recommendations and Findings 92 Appendix B: Research Design, Methods, and Data 99 Appendix C: Columbus Police After Action Review Team 109 Appendix D: List of Acronyms Acknowledgements The research presented in this report benefitted from a diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, disciplinary expertise, and professional experience. In particular, the lead researchers are indebted to the National Police Foundation, the primary subcontractor on this project. The National Police Foundation’s staff, notably Frank Straub and Ben Gorban, harnessed their expertise of policing across the United States and around the globe to ensure that the findings and recommendations aligned with the evolving knowledge base of policing best practice. We are grateful to the array of investigators and interviewers who volunteered their time, energy and expertise to conduct over 170 interviews in the midst of a global pandemic. Our Advisory Board also volunteered their time to guide the research and offer insights from a variety of disciplines that inform the as- sessment of protest behavior and police response. Being at a world-class university also advantaged us in that we were fortunate to draw on the talents, energy and enthusiasm of Ohio State University graduate and undergraduate students; we are deeply appreciative of the research and administrative support we received from Ohio State’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs, the Center for Human Resource Research, the Office of Research, Moritz College of Law, and University Communications. We would also like to acknowledge the efforts of the team at the Columbus Police Department who provided us with the requested documents, data and policies to ensure the work continued. Finally, we owe our deepest gratitude to the community members and law enforcement officers who took time to speak with us, sharing their honest reflections about a difficult, and sometimes traumatic, experience. Overview The murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis, Min- nesota, police officer on May 25, 2020, sparked months-long protests about racism and policing across the country and around the globe, including Columbus, Ohio. Captured on video and spread quickly through social media, Floyd’s death galvanized Americans to take to the streets in the midst of a global health pandemic to voice their anger and frus- tration about the many Black Americans who had been killed by police. The fairness of policing practice as applied to communities of color, particularly Black communities, and more fundamentally, the existence of the police as a legally sanctioned public institution were the clear motivations for the protests. Law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Columbus Police Depart- ment, also mobilized to the streets. Their job was to create a space for citizens to peace- fully exercise their right to free speech, while simultaneously ensuring the safety of the community. In many protests, police are neutral actors managing the boundaries of the demonstration. In the protests of 2020, protestors saw the police as antagonists, and systematically racist; they were the object of the protest. When police are the focus of the protest, there is a significant increase in the likelihood of direct conflict between pro- testors and law enforcement personnel. Adhering to best practice in protest management and adapting to evolving protest dynamics become even more important to ensure free speech rights and community safety. This report provides the results of an eight-month research study evaluating how the City of Columbus, Ohio, inclusive of elected officials and the Columbus Division of Police (CPD), managed the protests in Columbus from May 28 through July 19, 2020. The pur- pose of the research study was three-fold: • document interactions between community members and law enforcement personnel as a part of the protests; • evaluate the City of Columbus’s preparation for and response to the pro tests; and • generate research-informed recommendations about how to improve the performance of the City of Columbus in preparing for and responding to future protests. The study was conducted by an independent research team organized by the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University. The research team was composed of a lead investigative unit that gathered information, a diverse research advisory board. that provided subject-matter and technical expertise, and a core research group that as- sembled and synthesized the data, generated findings, and produced recommendations 1 Columbus Review Independent Research Team Principal Investigator Trevor Brown, Dean, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Lead Investigator Carter Stewart, Managing Director of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Project Manager Beth Frey, Project Manager, The Ohio State University Investigative Team Peggy Corn, Retired Gerald Ferguson, Retired Anthony Pierson, Senior Assistant Attorney General, State of Ohio Attorney General Lynn Readey, Retired Kyle Strickland, Deputy Director of Race and Democracy, Roosevelt Institute Mike Zuckerman, Skadden Fellow, Attorney, Ohio Justice and Policy Center Advisory Team Osei Appiah, Professor, School of Communication, The Ohio State University Daniel Baker, Post-Doctoral Scholar, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Richard Biehl, Chief, Dayton Police Kelly Garrett, Professor, School of Communication, The Ohio State University Russell Hassan, Associate Professor, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Tamara Herold, Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Savalas Kidd, Chief, University of Dayton Police Mary McCord, Legal Director, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, Georgetown University Jonathan Peters, Professor, University of Georgia Alandes Powell, Vice President of Business Controls, Fifth Third Bank Julio Thompson, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Vermont Attorney General Support Team Fred Alverson, Retired Airregina Clay, Graduate Student, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Shelby Hoffman, Graduate Student, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Mitch Isler, Graduate Student, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Carrie Mayer, Graduate Student, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University Thomas Pope, Graduate Student, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University Stephen Post, Graduate Student, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Jesse Vogel, Graduate Student, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University Shing Lin, Student, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University Andrew Pierce, Student, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University 2 The analysis and recommendations presented here draw on over 170 confidential inter- views with protest participants and observers; documents and administrative data from the City of Columbus and the CPD; and a variety of publicly available multi-media (e.g. news footage). The research design and study protocols have been reviewed and ap- proved by Ohio State University’s Institutional Review Board and have received a certifi- cate of confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health. The research results do not reflect the perspective or views of The Ohio State University. There are multiple audiences for this report. A primary audience is the elected leadership of the City of Columbus and the leaders of the CPD. This study was funded through a contract with the City of Columbus that has been voted on and approved by the Columbus City Council with funds from the CPD’s Drug Asset Seizure fund. Much of the report is directed at the members of this audience as they are the actors who can work collabora- tively to implement many of the strategic and tactical recommendations. The second au- dience are the Columbus community members who participated in the protests. They are key actors in this story as they took to the streets in large numbers over multiple weeks during a global health pandemic to express their grievances about racism in policing. A third audience includes the police officers tasked with responding to and managing the protests. They are equally important actors as they were asked to perform their duties in a highly difficult set of circumstances. A fourth primary audience is the collection of com- munity members who did not directly participate in the demonstrations but were impacted by the protests. Some of these community members live and work where the protests occurred, while others never ventured downtown during the summer but pay taxes to fund city services and elect